


The Illusion We've Become

by geckoholic



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Permanent Injury, Yancy Becket Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:18:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5454692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Neither of them climb out of the wreckage whole. Raleigh gets away with a  few scars; Yancy isn't so lucky.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Illusion We've Become

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sonora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/gifts).



> Becket brothers, as requested. You didn't tell me much more, so I improvised, and I hope the result is to your liking!
> 
> Beta-read by yohkobennington. Thank you! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Title is from "Glass House" by Red.

Neither of them climb out of the wreckage whole. Raleigh gets away with a few scars; Yancy isn't so lucky. After months in a hospital bed, he finds himself released with a stiff leg and the definite verdict that he'll never be fit for piloting again. But he's alive. 

Some part of him might have preferred death. 

 

*** 

 

Because even Pentecost isn't as heartless as he likes to pretend, Yancy is allowed to stay at the Shatterdome with Raleigh. The process of finding a new co-pilot didn't wait for his recovery; Raleigh has already burned through enough candidates that literally everyone involved dreads his matches with the next load. 

“It's okay,” Yancy tries to tell him, manages not to do it through gritted teeth. “You'll find someone else. Me being out doesn't have to mean you have to be out, too.” 

Except it does, and they both know it. Raleigh shoots him a look and snorts, marches out of the room. He never had a temper before. Objects under pressure, Yancy assumes. 

He glances out of the tiny window that overlooks the bay, mountains covered in snow, the same as when it happened. He might even miss the cold. 

 

***

 

They don't get very far. A little down the coast, where their leftover fame secures them jobs as odd hands on a government-commissioned farm. It's not like they know much else; neither of them bothered with a career other than _pilot_. Yancy had been looking at college applications when the first Kaiju landed. Raleigh never got that far. 

Now Yancy looks at him, shoveling cow dung down the middle of a barn, and wonders if he should have talked him out of it, all those years ago. War has a way of getting into young men's head, convincing them that any life they could have had is less important than the obscure duty to _defend_ , and maybe Yancy should have known better. 

But _maybe_ isn't worth shit. Literally. 

 

*** 

 

Sometimes they catch the attacks on the news, and sometimes they even stay to watch. Knifehead turned the tide. People they knew, maybe even fought with, die under the watchful eye of their respective national television agency. New names pop up, and Yancy doesn't bother memorizing them. 

The Shatterdome still looms large over both him and Raleigh; they'll sees a battle move on the screen and their eyes will meet, their old connection flare, and they'll both know what they'd done differently, how they'd fought. 

Last he'd heard, their Jaeger has been decommissioned too, found a final home in a scrapyard across the border. Probably for the best; soldiers are as superstitious as old farm wives, and anyone riding in a Jaeger that spit her pilots out bent and broken once will do so with that thought in their heads, doomed from the start. 

 

***

 

The farm gets closed down roundabout a year later. It's right around the time they introduce foot stamps and rations. Until now, the Kaiju invasion never seemed like a war, not in the traditional sense, nothing the civilian population will have to help carry. Now it does. 

The next couple of months are _bad_. Old PPDC connections carry them through with a few temporary jobs, they're moving every few weeks, go where the work is. 

And then comes the wall project. 

Raleigh and Yancy agree that it's dumb and will never work – no one who ever saw a Kaiju up close and personal will, Yancy's convinced. But sadly, those people don't make the big decisions. But it means a permanent job, even if the work's shitty. Raleigh has an easier time with it; he always loved heights, another brand of adrenaline rush he can still chase, and he's good with his hands. Yancy hates it with a fiery passion. He doesn't quite know why. He didn't mind farm work. 

 

***

 

Every so often, someone among the work crews will figure out who they are, who they _were_ , and they'll get their fifteen minutes of fame all over again. 

Reactions wary wildly, from shoulder claps to rants about how the Jaeger program sucks and should have been discontinued years ago. It gets worse once that actually happens; apparently every still-alive pilot is somehow responsible for the fall of what people thought was earth's first line of defense. 

And then a ghost of the past comes for them, and Yancy and Raleigh learn that the Jaeger program might not be quite as dead as everyone thought. 

 

*** 

 

Being back in a Shatterdome gives Yancy goosebumps, a weird alien sensation that's made up of familiarity and dread. They're welcomed by a young engineer. She looks them up and down, assessing, and Yancy can tell that the result of her assessment comes up short to the legend. They're both still covered in dirt and grease, Yancy's sporting an unruly beard, has put on a few pounds since the last official PPDC promotional photo shoot. Her eyes don't linger on him long, though; Raleigh's the one they wanted, the still able-bodied pilot, Yancy's only here as the free gift in a package deal. 

She shows them the handful Jaegers they managed to salvage. She shows them _their_ Jaeger, rebuilt, risen from the ashes, as gorgeous as she was the morning they went after Knifehead. 

Yancy feels bile rise in his throat. His hand flails out to Raleigh, grabbing at his jacket, but his brother doesn't seem to share his reaction; he's staring at the giant machine like she's a long lost lover, melancholic, spellbound. 

Suddenly Yancy feels sick for a different reason. If he'd made Raleigh stay with the corps, if he hadn't allowed him to get dragged down with his invalid older brother... 

Well, as statistical evidence shows, he'd most likely be dead. 

 

***

 

Because he's a masochist at the core, Yancy watches Raleigh's test in the kwoon with potential co-pilots. They're all making a valid effort, but he can tell before everyone else could that they're _wrong_. Raleigh's all wrong. His heart isn't in it, and he keeps glancing at Yancy, apologetic and wistful, and this isn't going to work. 

That is, until the Raleigh challenges the young engineer. Yancy's gut twinges as he watches them fight, a dance neither of them ever needed to practice the steps for, reacting to each other by virtue of reading their respective body language like the pages of a worn, old favorite book. 

Yancy still remembers how that felt. 

 

***

 

He derives no satisfaction from witnessing the spectacular disaster of their first drift. Raleigh is still his baby brother. He still wants nothing but the best for him. 

Afterwards, he seeks out the young engineer – Mako, if she'll fight with his brother he might as well memorize her name – and finds her over a heap of old Jaeger parts. She'd been with Raleigh at lunch, and Yancy kept his distance, but now he needs... he needs to talk to her. Make sure they'll find their way, because Raleigh's life may very well depend on it. 

He calls her name to get her attention, and her body snaps into a rigid line. Their eyes meet, and she nods at him. “Mr. Becket.” 

“Ms. Mori.” He nods back; both him and Raleigh where diplomat's children, after all, passably fluent in several cultures besides their own. “I'm sorry. For earlier.” 

Her eyes widen with surprise, and Yancy can't blame her; it's not how he intended to start this conversation either. “You did not have anything to do with that.” 

“It was my memories that sent you spiraling. His... our memories.” He can still feel it, even now, the pain, the fear, the stone-cold terror at expecting to die in a chunk of metal with his brother's brain still wired into his. 

She looks down. “I had no idea it would feel like this.” 

A few beats of silence pass between them, because even though they didn't drift with one another they still connected by proxy, and words can't ever live up to something like that. 

“Keep him alive out there,” Yancy says, when what he means is _I know that you can_ and _I'm willing to trust you with the most precious thing that I have_ and _please remember it won't be his priority_. 

Mako just smiles. 

 

*** 

 

Yancy doesn't watch them fight. He stands in the back of the crowded Loccent, gaze trained on the tiny moving dot on Tendo's screens, rather than running out in to the flight deck to catch every glimpse of the Jaeger that he can. Because that's all he's able to do; the only choice he has. He can't help them. 

They get taken away in giant claws. They fall to earth. The seconds between the impact and their voices on the intercom are the longest of his life. 

On their way out to the flight pad, Hercules, who only just came back in himself, squeezes his shoulder, gives him a rare smile. In that moment, there's probably no other person on this planet that understands him better. 

 

*** 

 

Before Pitfall, everyone says their goodbyes. Yancy and Raleigh are no exception, even though they don't say much at all. 

“If you get dead out there, I'll kill you,” Yancy says, and Raleigh shakes his head, grins a little too hard. 

“Have a little faith in me, for once.” 

They both know that Yancy never, ever, not for a second, didn't believe in him. He did so when Raleigh was in third grade and didn't think he'd be able to hack his maths exam, and he did so when they were at the PDCC academy and people thought he'd been too young to make it, that Yancy should find someone else to pilot with. And he does so now. 

He watches Raleigh suit up in silence, wordlessly trails after him when he walks up into the dome to meet Mako. He stands beside Hercules when they both watch all they have left on this earth climb into a Jaeger one last time. 

He doesn't take his eyes off the screens for even one second. 

 

***

 

In the end, they save the world. 

In the end, he gets to watch his brother come home.


End file.
